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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22620364">Cast Me Down</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chet_Un_Gwan/pseuds/Chet_Un_Gwan'>Chet_Un_Gwan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wolf 359 (Radio)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, also it's gen in content but pryce and cutter could go either way, the first two are just mentioned</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 08:21:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22620364</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chet_Un_Gwan/pseuds/Chet_Un_Gwan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Pryce and Carter Tip #440: While we're at it: <em>stay alive longer than the enemy.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Marcus Cutter &amp; Miranda Pryce</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Cast Me Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>This lasted longer than I thought it would.</em> Miranda Pryce's last moments as Miranda Pryce are spent hissing insults and threats, but they're also spent thinking this.</p><p>The anger isn't a front, to be clear. If there is one thing that Miranda is good at, it's unbridled rage. She is, of course, good at many things, however, and another of them is multitasking.</p><p>She's livid at losing. She knew she would be, when she imagined it, knew that the loss would be unbearable. And under these circumstances no less. The universe didn't even lend her the common courtesy of being beaten by someone competent, just a jail rat and a doll she built herself. She's livid. She's enraged.</p><p>She knew, of course, that this was coming.</p><p>---</p><p>Pryce and Carter Tip #439: Don't overcomplicate thing. Remember, every battle comes down to one simple principal: stay alive longer than the enemy.</p><p>While Marcus spun fantasies out of thin air with his words and his ruthlessness, Miranda kept her thoughts to herself and made her own plans. It's not that she doesn't trust him, though perhaps her definition of trust is not a common one. She trusts in a narrow, precise way, less about emotion and more to do with what she knows someone will do. She knows that Marcus will not betray her. She knows that his goals and hers are the same. She trusts that he will do what he is good at, that he will help her, that whatever part of him is left capable of caring, cares about her.</p><p>Still. He has, perhaps, too much faith in the impossible.</p><p>She could keep them both alive for a very long time. Repair and replacement, backups, maybe, if she could manage it. She could take them farther than anyone has ever gone. But unless they have something to accomplish, out there, in the distant future, it is all for nothing. Miranda has her plans. Marcus's fantasies will fit where they can.</p><p>---</p><p>Pryce and Carter Tip #447: Hearts don't break. They are an elastic muscle. If anything, they <em>burst</em>. </p><p>Miranda has wondered, sometimes, if it's still in her to extract herself from the situation. On one level, yes, of course, always. Miranda Pryce has never been anywhere that she could not leave without issue. She has never formed enough of an attachment to force her to stay somewhere she didn't want to.</p><p>But that's the issue, isn't it. Wanting to. She has not wanted to leave Goddard or Marcus's side for a very long time. How is she supposed to test this, test herself, under these circumstances, how is she supposed to gather data <em>without</em> such tests.</p><p>And should she test it. If all this is, is a frantic scramble for freedom, then she is better off stopping this impulse before it can go further. There is so much to gain here, and so much that she already has.</p><p>She tells herself this, not constantly, but regularly. A reminder that comes in cycles. She might be able to leave, to continue on without Marcus and all his resources, but. She doesn't <em>want</em> to.</p><p>Her stupid, ambitious Marcus. The one person who, despite their vast differences, might actually understand her. She won't just walk away from that.</p><p>---</p><p>Pryce and Carter Tip #930: The stories of King Arthur are instructive: there are times you get to have a magic sword, and there are times you need to throw it into a lake.</p><p>The thing about Arthurian myths is that they are all different; a million stories and retellings stacked on top of each other and blended together, contradicting and clashing, each one escalating away from the one hill-fort they may have started from, that once upon a time might have temporarily delayed the Anglo-Saxon invasion.</p><p>The thing about Arthurian myths is that they are all the same; they are about saving and being saved, no matter how briefly.</p><p>Pryce prefers the relative neatness of Shakespearean canon to the mess that is the Arthurian mythos, and she doesn’t like thinking of what she’s doing as saving. But sometimes, on days when Marcus had been especially bubbly and effusive, she liked to go to some apartment that Marcus has never been in, and quietly read the Vulgate Mort Artu. It’s a reminder. A comfort. A return to a fact she holds in her heart that Marcus has never seemed to understand. Nothing lasts forever. The hill-fort falls, the king bleeds out, the sword is thrown back into its lake. The story always ends.</p><p>Marcus held her hand and told her that she is spectacular, that between the two of them, they’ll make it! They’ll live forever! They’ll <em>win</em>. But no matter how much praise Marcus heaps on her, she cannot actually make him immortal. There is no such thing. There is no way to stretch something so far, and still farther, to survive with survival as the only goal.</p><p>And she’s alright with that. The story is the important part, anyways. Marcus is her magic sword, her Excalibur. He is what swept into her life, giving her the power and resources she lacked. Or maybe she’s the sword. After all, it was the the sword that showed the coming end, that was inscribed, <em>cast me down</em>. It could really go either way, though, they're bound up in each other enough. But what matters is that between the two of them, they can change so much more than they could before. Now, her work will leave a mark on the world deep enough to outlast her, stories built on stories built on stories, twisting outward, changing, but always carrying the shape of their origin. It’s not about lasting forever. It’s about lasting as long as they can.</p><p>---</p><p>Pryce and Carter Tip #440: While we're at it: <em>stay alive longer than the enemy.</em></p><p>---</p><p>It's said that Alzheimer's causes the loss of memory in the reverse order of when they were gained. Newer memories vanishing first, their shallow pathways wiped away more easily. In the end, you're left with the first things you ever experienced, the deepest set memories, the building blocks for everything else. It stands to reason that this machine would work the same way.</p><p>Miranda has never been bound to reason, and neither are her machines. The first thing she loses is her memory of being vulnerable and alone.</p><p>Flash. Her childhood in the orphanage.</p><p>Flash. Building her first robot.</p><p>Flash. Meeting Matthew.</p><p>Flash, flash, flash, an entire lifetime of building her own fate. Changing the world as much as she could in the limited time she had.</p><p>At the end, she's left with two things. A sense of anger, of spite. A child-like need to lash out at whatever is around. Whoever these people are, these ones clutching at each other and crying, she hates them.</p><p>And second, a strange feeling. Almost wonder. <em>I didn't think I'd get this far,</em> she thinks, before every part of her that used to be Miranda Pryce is gone. <em>I didn't think we'd last this long.</em></p>
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